The horse race has a tradition as long as horses have been domesticated, but what kind of sadistic mind organized a horse race that was 3,500 miles long? It was the Great American Horse Race in 1976, a part of the U.S. bicentennial celebration. The route retraced parts of the Pony Express, the Oregon Trail, and the Donner Party, and was scheduled to take 14 weeks. The winner would take home $25,000, and 91 teams took off from Frankfort, New York, on May 31st.
And so they were off. Day by day, the race was less a neck-in-neck sprint than a kind of friendly, prolonged shuffle. The hundred or so riders were accompanied by their second mounts, along with a support staff of about 750, mostly friends and relatives who had volunteered to caravan along in pickup trucks and trailers and carry supplies. The whole posse moved along the same prefabricated route, from camp to camp. There were mandatory vet checks every ten miles. "What's the slowest race ever? The Great American Horse Race," joked the Dover, Ohio Daily Reporter when the group hit their town in June.
Pace notwithstanding, it was as grueling as anyone had guessed. Like their pioneer predecessors, horses and riders got tired, injured, or just fed up. The group burned through around 18,000 horseshoes.
The race started with fine Arabian horses, tough Icelandic ponies, Thoroughbreds, Appaloosas, and Virl Norton’s mules, which gave the other contestants a laugh. You can guess who won by the title, but you should read the story of the Great American Horse Race at Atlas Obscura.